IZotope RX 8 Standard Crossgrade. IZotope RX 8 Standard Crossgrade (ESD); audio restoration software; crossgrades from from any paid iZotope / Exponential Audio product to RX 8 Standard; profound process control with extensive set of parameters and less artifacts; Guitar De-noise is a module dedicated. 2.) Click Driver Type, and select an available driver. 3.) Click Audio Device, and select the desired audio output device. 4.) If using ASIO (Windows) or CoreAudio (OS X), make sure to click the 'Channel routing.' Option to select the appropriate stereo output stream on your output device.
Earlier this year (in February), the studio that I work out of has moved from Mac OSX to Windows (Moving to the Samplitude DAW, which is Windows only). I have been using the same RME Fireface UFX interface. I used a firewire connection on Mac and now am using the UFX via USB on this Windows laptop. I am disappointed to say my experience has been not been too stable so far- I hear that RME interfaces are generally quite stable on Windows, although I have had some uncommonly bad luck it seems.
Occasionally, Totalmix FX will freeze and stop responding, and show the meters frozen as well. When this happens, the DAW freezes, and if the DAW was recording, audio capture also stops. During this time, no audio programs or Totalmix/Totalmix USB Settings will respond at all. I have to unplug or turn off the Fireface, and re-plug it/turn it back on, and immediately when unplugging the interface, the freeze stops, and the audio software begins to respond again. While Totalmix is frozen, the interface itself (its buttons and small built-in LCD screen) still respond okay.
The bug seems to happen randomly, but does occur slightly more frequently while changing audio programs, loading plugins, or performing some sort of action in a DAW. Disabling 'D2D' in the Totalmix settings also makes the problem happen much more frequently, where the freeze would then be accompanied with a loud 'pop' noise.
I have tried the following to fix it:
-Upgrading to Intel's latest USB3 drivers, upgrade all of the laptop's drivers and firmware, and upgrading the interface's drivers and firmware to the latest versions
-Uninstalling RME drivers via 'Programs and Features' and re-installing
-Using an Expresscard USB2 adapter and plugging in the interface via USB2 instead of USB3
-Using three different USB cables
-Disabling Selective USB Suspend in power options
-Disabling power saving on the USB3 root hub
-Disabling integrated graphics and going to only discrete GPU
-Disabling CPU voltage throttling in the Windows power options by setting min and max CPU to 100%
-Disabling voltage throttling in the BIOS
-Disabling a number of security-related CPU features in the BIOS
-Run the DAW and Totalmix on integrated graphics only via the nVidia options
-Disabling hardware acceleration (D2D) in Totalmix
-Locking registry and enabling MMCSS in Totalmix settings
-Disabling Aero in the Windows 7 display settings
-Removing all peripheral devices
-Using another DAW
-Disabling anti-aliasing, v-sync, and other related settings in the nVidia control panel for Totalmix and the DAW
-Running Totalmix as an administrator, and using various compatibility modes
-Using another RME interface (I also tried using my RME Babyface, and the problem still occurs)
Here's the interesting bit: When Totalmix is minimized to the notification area, and no Totalmix window is actually loaded up, the problem never happens. This freeze only seems to happen if a Totalmix window is present, and showing on the taskbar. This lends me to believe it may be graphically related, although I am not 100% sure.
To further test, when I plugged in an old M-Audio USB interface, I was able to use it for several hours without any problems. For some reason, this issue seems to be specific to Totalmix.
I have noticed a few other threads that show similar problems, although I am not sure whether they are the same cause:
https://www.forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?id=22360
https://www.forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?id=16235
https://www.forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?id=12436
https://www.forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?id=21566
After e-mailing the RME support, they told me that this is not a reported problem at all, that the above links are not similar enough to my problem, and asked me to contact my computer manufacturer instead. Needless to say, Lenovo support had no expertise in this particular issue, and wasn't able to suggest anything that I hadn't already tried.
Has anyone experienced this problem, and knows what to do to fix it? Has anyone had this freezing issue on newer versions of Windows (Windows 8 or 10) as well? I tried using the interface via Firewire by using a Startech expresscard, but that did not work (every time I initialized ASIO, there would be a loud and constant distorted/crackling sound).
Izotope Rx Asio Driver Problem Solving
The laptop is a Lenovo Thinkpad P70. The specs, if they are important to know, are:
Intel Xeon E3-1505M v5 CPU, DDR4 type ram, running from a Samsung NVMe hard drive, USB3 and 3.1 ports, USB2 via Expresscard adapter, integrated and discrete GPU (The discrete GPU is an nVidia Quadro M3000m. Optimus GPU switching or discrete-only GPU modes are available, but integrated-only is not available on this laptop). The OS is Windows 7 64 bit. I use an external HDMI monitor (A Samsung TV) and use this HDMI connection for audio passthrough as well, for non-ASIO purposes like web browsing and so on. I also have two USB hubs plugged in, one with the keyboard and mouse, and the other with an iLok and eLicenser plugged in. I always record in 88k/24 bit or 44.1/24 bit, and my primary DAWs are Studio One v3 and Samplitude Pro X2, although I have seen this problem in Guitar Rig, Sibelius, and other programs using the UFX ASIO.
Asio Driver Mac
If anyone has any experience with this issue, please do let me know! Any help or input would be greatly appreciated.
Asio4all
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EDIT (25th October, 2016) - Solution:
After talking to nVidia and trying various versions of their Quadro graphics drivers, the issue seemed to be related to either the graphics drivers themselves, or how Totalmix was interacting with that particular variant on the graphics drivers. The older versions of the Quadro drivers were far worse. What is unusual is, not only was Totalmix affected by unstable graphics drivers, but the DAWs and all programs using ASIO were affected as well. For reasons I don't quite understand, a computer's graphics drivers seem to be able to directly affect the stability of ASIO (when, intuitively, it seems like they should be separate). In Samplitude Pro X2 (it seems to be improved in the new X3 version), the less stable versions of the graphics drivers would result in lost ASIO buffers every time I would load a plugin window, or do anything that required something to be rendered.
I've since then moved to Windows 10, and I'm happy to report that the newest versions of the nVidia drivers, combined with the newest RME drivers, seem to work without any problems, both on Firewire and USB. I have noticed that, on previous versions of the drivers, a few settings tweaks in the nVidia control panel improved stability a lot, especially with GPU-rendered plugins like Fabfilter and Vienna MIR Pro. If someone still has issues with what appears to be graphics-related instability, try the following:
Open the nVidia control panel, go to 'Manage 3D Settings', and then to 'Program Settings'.
For any program that you use that uses ASIO (including standalone plugins like Guitar Rig, iZotope RX, and so on), apply the following:
-Anisotropic Filtering: Off
-Antialiasing Gamma Correction: Off
-Antialiasing Mode: Off
-Power Management Mode (if applicable): Prefer Consistent Performance
-Multi-Display/Mixed GPU Acceleration: Single Display Performance Mode (Multiple monitors still work fine in this mode)
-Shader Cache: Off
-Threaded Optimization: Off
-Vertical Sync: Off
This seems to make a big difference. Also, it might go without saying, but if your laptop/computer supports nVidia Optimus GPU switching, disable that and switch to GPU only. Optimus is generally awful, and GPU-only-mode can (if need be) free up a little bit of CPU for audio processing too.